‘Secret’ app is bringing out the bullies in the gay scene

We attend HRC dinners in NYC and LA to help fund the cause for gay rights. We attend Lady Gaga concerts which support a “Born This Way” organization for teen bullying. We march in gay pride parades around the world to help get the word out there that gays aren’t so bad and celebrate the fact we are not the ‘norm’. We then bully each other until we all start committing suicide and the #itgetsbetter campaign is nothing but hogwash and misleading because honestly what they face when they grow older is much worse in the gay community #sorrynotsorry. The party promoters you see on Facebook trashing other promoters, sending out vindictive tweets to others in our gay family, people gossiping at happy hour about their ex’s or setting up others to make them look bad. All of this but yet there is one thing that will really kill the gays… the ‘Secret’ app.

Oh yes the app where you can log on under the cloaked identity of a “friend” among others in your phone contacts and rant on about anything. You can tell someones got an STD or go on about an HIV status or any other slanderous activity but not have to pay the consequences of owning up to the person behind the posts.

The DC and Atlanta gay scenes in particular have been infamously cruel to a few people where friends will all gang up on a person. Since they are all connected in friends they may see the posts more often but yet it is there for the public to see and then posted on Tumblr and Facebook and even tweeted about. One person whom I will not mention nor do I know this person has been talked about from NYC to LA and he lives in Atlanta accused of stalking someone. Why not just get a restraining order on him? Why go around bullying him saying he has a small cock and hes ugly and resort to middle school things like name calling. How does #itgetsbetter at this point? We have turned into a community of bullies and everyone thinks its funny and not a serious thing.

Online anonymity is synonymous with bullying, harassment and ugly comments. That’s why YouTube and Huffington Post have moved away from anonymity in the past year. It was getting out of control. So much hate in the world. People will sit from their cubicles of judgement and look down on someone else.

Secret is not the only app that lets you go around bulling or trashing others there is Confide, Whisper and Yik Yak that have become popular and notorious with cloaked identities.

This anonymous “app” has become the modern high-tech equivalent of writing nasty things about someone on the bathroom wall and reflects a side of our gay community that takes away all that we have done for rights.

This is not a new phenomenon in our community with people being rude and mean. If you look at some of the ads on Craigslist and Grindr where people proudly request “no fems, no fats.” But this is a whole new level of vindictive younger gays who are playing dirtier than ever.

Disclosing someone’s HIV status for entertainment, ridiculing someone for their alcoholism or drug usage, hiding behind an unsigned comment, making fun of others penis sizes or weights, trashing people publicly, and anything else that goes on behind the secretively app are all things we should have grown out of after middle school or junior high. Sometimes you just have to deal with it if you dislike someone and ignore them not go off about them in a public setting. Remember that karma comes around and bites you in the ass sometimes when you do that at least I would like to think. It’s great to have a place to confess things that you did on an app but to go on about another person and mentioning their names should not be allowed. Not sure why this app has not in itself been sued for slander.

“Secret” and similar apps reward the worst or worst behavior in our community. When you watch something like the broadcast of “Normal Heart” it reminds us of our community coming together to take care of one another. It just shows that the best thing to do is settle down get a few dogs and stay far away from the community sometimes but for someone like me I enjoy the club scene and try to hang out with positive people to socialize with and carry on conversations that are not about judging others. I think everyone needs to look at the “Man in the Mirror” and ask yourself the skeletons in your closet before you go casting stones on others. Yes Ma’am!!